


Suck It Up

by cerbreus



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Amount of Gore and Blood Will change, Hurt Eventual Comfort, M/M, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Rating May Change, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 10:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16680187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerbreus/pseuds/cerbreus
Summary: On the way back from a bar next to their military base, Jack Morrison has an altercation with a supernatural being that leaves him changed for better or worse. Fearing he'll hurt his loved ones and friends as he changes, he takes drastic measures to ensure they'll be safe... from him.





	Suck It Up

Jack's eyes water with the burn of the whiskey he just threw back, his nerves about at being at the bar definitely getting to him. He hadn't been in a bar, or really anywhere this lively since he'd come back from his deployment. It'd taken a lot of encouragement from Gabriel and the rest of his crew to get him here. 

“How are you holding up?” Gabriel says, leaning into his space. Jack can feel the warmth of his arm brushing against his hand. 

“I'm fine, it's just a bar. I think the better question is how is Jesse.” Jack knows it's the liquor in his system spurring the urge, but he wants to brush his hand down the length of Gabriel's forearm. He likes the comfort of Gabe being this close. So he pulls away. 

The question makes Gabriel look over to where Jesse stands across the room, slamming back beer for beer matching the rest of their group. They seem to have started a drinking contest. It's not unusual, they so rarely get time off like this together. It always ends in a spirited competition one way or another. 

Gabriel chuckles a little as he turns back to Jack, and the warm smile stays on his face as he speaks again. “Well now I'm sure he feels fantastic, but I think tomorrow morning might be exceptionally unpleasant.” 

Jack nods and smiles, taps his fingernail against the rim of his shot glass. Gabriel continues to nurse his single beer. Jack's given a decent attempt at drinking, but SEP has left him able to be 5 shots in and barely buzzed. The longer he's here the more he wonders why he’s stayed so long, but the companionable silence and occasional banter with Gabe has made the outing worth it. 

He can feel himself starting to get overstimulated; too much noise, too many smells. He knows they all needed to go out and relax, so he was glad to participate. But it's not really his thing anymore. He's not the same Jack he was when he was younger, able to go to bars and enjoy himself well into the wee hours of the morning. 

“I think I'm going to head out.” Jack mumbles as he pushes away from the bar. He pats Gabriel's shoulder while he stands, and fishes out his wallet to pay the barkeep. He turns back to Gabe with a small smile. “I gotta be up at 6 am whether I like it or not.” 

Gabriel moves to stand as well, clearly about to leave with him and walk back to base with Jack. “I'll go let everybody know we're gonna head out then.”

“Oh no, don't let me ruin their fun. I can walk back to base myself, you stay and keep them out of trouble ok?” 

Gabe catches his arm as he moves to head out. “You sure everything's ok? You didn't have to come out with us if you didn't want to.” The worry is evident in the small furrow of his brow. 

Jack gives him an easy smile, this one a lot more natural than he feels right now. “Yeah everything's ok Gabe, don't worry about me so much.”

“If you say so buddy.” Gabriel chuckles a little. “See you in the morning then.” 

Jack breathes in the crisp night air as he walks back to the base, disappointed that he can't really make out many of the stars. One thing he always misses when he comes back after a deployment in unpopulated areas is the night sky. Cities like this have so much noise pollution, that on a good night you can see the north star. He likes how the vast amount of stars in rural night skies make him feel so small, that his decisions won't ever change the constant of their glow.

It's his distraction in looking at the lack of stars that he doesn't notice until it's far too late that he's being followed. 

The hair on the back of his neck raises, he knows the feeling of being watched, he can hear the sound of footsteps behind him not trying to be stealthy. He picks up the pace, looking around as inconspicuously as possible, and the verdict isn't good. There's nobody around, they're surrounded by trees and the end of the city limits just before they start approaching the land the base is on. 

He knows it's possibly one of the worst places to get cornered like this; it's too dark, and he doesn't know who's behind him. It doesn't take him long to find out. 

Just as he turns his head to glance back behind him, the glint of iridescent red irises in the faint light is all he sees before what feels like the weight of a freight train slams into him. 

He tumbles into the ground, gravel cutting at his face. His heart freezes in his chest when he realized that he, a super soldier, is being overpowered with ease. He tries to pull away, to move, anything at all, but he's pinned solidly against the gravel. A hand roughly grabs his hair and pulls it to the side to expose his neck, and then all Jack can feel is something tear into his neck and latch on. The feeling of fire explodes from where something, some _one_ is latched onto his neck, and he can't even focus on that for long before the fire overtakes his body and he can't hold on much longer. In a matter of mere seconds he's reached a pain threshold he's reached only twice before in his life and he blacks out. 

\--------------  


Smudged glimpses of someone in through the filter of unconsciousness, a metallic tang at his lips accompanied by what… Jack's mind reads as a guilty voice. And then he's unconscious again.

When he finally wakes, he aches like he'd just been on the battlefield. He aches like he had so many times in SEP. He's light-headed and so disoriented that he barely moves into a sitting position before retching over the edge of his bed and onto a tiled floor. The white of the room, the walls, and the fluorescent lights make his head throb. It doesn't take him too long to realize he's in a hospital, but the realization jars him further. He can hear the rapid fire pulse of his heartbeat on a monitor and hurried footsteps not too far behind. 

A nurse comes into the room, gently trying to push him back into a lying position. The feeling of her touching him makes his skin crawl, and his gut wrench in a new and incomprehensible way. Jack can't seem to get much more than garbled noises, trying to pull away from her unsuccessfully. He can hear more people enter the room, nervous murmuring he can't quite make out and then he's sinking back into a restless darkness. 

\--------------  


The room is dim when Jack wakes up, and he can sense the presence of people in the room with him. He's feeling less like his being is detached from his body, he's feeling less pain, and the world seems to make more sense again. Through his still disoriented vision he can see that Gabriel is sleeping in a chair next to his hospital bed. A further look around the room finds Ana, Jesse, and Angela- who he is surprised to see but… relieved nonetheless. 

As he becomes more alert he starts to notice a deep, sharp ache at the base of his neck, and the startling ache of bruising at his face, and torso, and arms. They feel as if they're fading, but it's been a while since that kind of pain has ever registered for him. It deeply unsettles him. He knows something isn't right, and it nags at his psyche that he can't figure it out. 

Jack hisses in pain when he tries to move, and it startles everyone in the room awake except Jesse. His eyes meet theirs and the relief on their faces sweeps over him. He's never seen them quite so worried, at least not in a while. Gabriel and Ana are at his side immediately. Gabe seems hesitant to touch him, but his fingers rest close to his. Ana however is on him at once with the light, sterile touches of a physician, analyzing the injuries and his state. 

“Thank fuck you're awake.” Gabriel's voice is soft, and stern. He can feel Gabe's fingers twitch closer to his. 

“You had us all worried, Jack. We've… never seen you like this. We've never seen something like this, either.” Angela pipes up from next to Ana, and she holds out a paper cup of water to him. 

He quickly downs it, and a couple more as well. Ana seems satisfied with her examining and pulls her chair close to sit, taking hold of his hand once he finishes with his cup. “Some soldiers coming back from the bars found you. The state you were in…. They thought you were dead.”

She squeezes his hand as she pauses. He can see confusion filtering in to her expression now. “We have no idea what happened to you. We.. don't know how something like this happened either.” 

“I don't… like the implications of… of what must’ve happened. You've been assaulted somehow, and that speaks to an incredible danger you are in. We are all in, now.” Gabriel's voice is hard, the stress he’s carrying in his body seeping into his town. “And we can’t… tell what could have done it. We can’t rule out an animal, and we can’t rule out a person.”

“Both of which… Are… a terrifying concept. An animal, that could take out a super soldier?” Gabe pales briefly at the concept, obviously thinking about the terror something like this could inflict on regular civilians.

Jack shivers at the concept as well, while quickly draining his cup of water. He’s thirsty in a way he hasn’t been since spending months in a desert. Angela quickly refills it for him, but gives him a stern glance that makes him slow his drinking to sips. The water.. Isn’t helping anyway. He leans back and lets their conversation flow over him, trying to take comfort in their company to distract from the pain. It’s not the first time he’s wished that painkillers worked for him, but he’s grown used to tuning it into another background noise he can more or less push down. 

They continue talking, and trying to see what they can learn from his memories about what happened, but it’s such sparse information it leaves everyone disappointed. The nurse ends up shooing them out of the room when visiting hours end, “More so for their sake than yours.” she ends up mentioning to him when she takes his blood pressure after they’ve left. She tells them how worried he had them, them not leaving his side for well over 48 hours now. Despite the situation, he’s filled with warmth at the thought of knowing he was so well looked after. 

\--------------  


A week later, he’s being released from the hospital. His accelerated healing allows for it, but he’s still being put on temporary leave to be sure he fully recovers from this. The military, and its medics, don’t seem keen on taking back a commander that could put some unhealthy standards in place by coming back from a life threatening altercation too early. Jack gets it, he really does, but staying in his apartment on base for hours on end by himself is a pretty unpleasant experience for him now. Everything is being taken care of while he’s on leave, but he’s been so used to working at least 13 hours a day that he doesn’t know what to do with his time now.

And then there’s the constant feeling of paranoia creeping over his back, and the emptiness that’s been gnawing at his psyche.  
Ever since he’s come back from the hospital there’s a hunger he can’t quite satisfy with food. Even his favorite foods don’t help, and his friends have been more than happy to drop off as much of it as they can. It’s like.. Having a craving you don’t know how to satisfy, a food that you can’t quite remember. And there’s thirst on top of it, he wants to attribute it to spending time in the hospital being taxing on his body, but no amount of water ever really takes away the feeling of thirst, just as no amount of food takes away the whole feeling of hunger. Jack hasn’t mentioned it, mostly out of not knowing how to describe it without sounding like the incident hadn’t rattled a few marbles loose. 

Gabriel has been stopping by much more than the others, and Jack finds himself very, very content about this. He’s always wanted an excuse to spend more time with the man, and having gotten injured seems to have given them both one. The nagging crush he’s had for well over a decade on the man seems to have grown stronger with this, but… There’s moments he thinks it might not just be him. Moments where he and Gabe just kind of catch themselves looking at each other, or using a lot more pda than usual… But every time they’ve just brushed it off and kept talking about something, or brought up something new to talk about.

Jack is laying on the couch when Gabe finds him on the 3rd day into his leave. He’s spent most of the day trying to find documentaries to watch, but never being quite interested. He’s been strictly ordered off of exertion for the first week, so he can’t even go for a jog to get rid of his pent up energy. 

“Looks like you’ve had another eventful day then, hm?” Gabe announces as he looks at the screen paused on a wildcat documentary. He brushes a hand through Jack’s unruly hair briefly before catching himself, and pulling away to rid himself of his fatigues. He sits at the end where Jack’s feet have taken residence to unzip his boots, and untuck his pants. “Run out of documentaries about Fish already?”

Jack groans and covers his eyes with his arm. “I ran out of those yesterday, I’m almost out of animal documentaries entirely.”

Gabe chuckles, and puts his boots to the side of the couch. 

“I guess we’ll have to distract you with cooking for a bit then.” 

He stands, and extends a hand out for Jack. Jack takes it, making a dramatic sigh as Gabe helps heave him off the couch. They move to the kitchen where Gabe starts grabbing things from the cabinet and fridge. 

“Is Ana joining us for dinner again tonight?” Jack sits on a bar stool next to the counter, resting his face in a palm. 

“Nope. Jesse is stopping by though, he heard I was going to make duck Adobo and weaseled his way into getting some free ‘gourmet cuisine’ as he says.” Jack sees him roll his eyes, but he’d have to agree with Jesse on this. Gabriel doesn’t think much of his cooking, but if he’d known all it would take for the man to start cooking more was him getting hurt he’d probably have done it before now. 

Jack chuckles a little, wincing when doing so causes a twinge in his neck where one of his wounds is. “Well, I guess I should get more properly dressed then. Can’t let him think that getting hurt has rid me of my ‘anal tendencies’.” 

“Well, come help when you’re done then.”

Jack goes off to his bedroom and promptly changes, putting on some proper jeans and socks, and a less wrinkly white t-shirt. When he makes his way back Gabe’s laid out all the ingredients on the counter, and starts telling him what to measure out ahead of time. After which, he gives a whole duck for Jack to butcher. He knows that Jack knows how to butcher chickens already, so he figures a duck should be easy enough. And he’s right in that, ducks aren’t too different from chickens. 

While he’s patting dry the meat he’s separated from the duck he hears a hiss and looks over to see while cutting onions Gabe’s managed to nick his finger with the knife. He chuckles about it, raising the hand to survey the damage. 

“Looks like I haven’t changed much since I was a little kid, fingers always getting in the way.” 

It’s a good thing he’s busy looking at it, or he’d notice how intently Jack was staring at the wound now. Much more.. Intently than necessary. Jack finds himself laser focused in on the bright red blood oozing from the wound, and a twinge in his gut reminds him suddenly of the hunger he’s been feeling. He’s moving before he even realizes what he’s doing, gently grabbing Gabriel's hand and raising the finger to his lips. Gabriel looks at him, mouth frozen open as he suddenly cuts off while talking. Jack is reveling in the sweetness of his blood, almost entranced by it when he meets Gabe’s gaze. He sees the blush rising to Gabe's skin, and immediately feels his cheeks warm as well and he pulls away. _‘What am I doing? Why did I..do that.’_ Jack is still holding Gabe’s hand, he watches Gabe gape a little bit longer before trying and failing to form words. 

Jesse banging on Jack’s front door breaks them out of whatever trance it was they’d been in, and they spring apart. 

“I’ll uh, I’ll get that.” Jack mutters before quickly going to the door and trying to compose his expression before opening it. 

“Heya, heard you were getting that gourmet duck treatment huh, commander?” The guy smugly cracks a grin, and pats him gently on the shoulder as he moves into the entryway. Luckily Jesse doesn’t seem to notice anything off between him and Gabe, and the rest of the evening goes off without a hitch with the man there to ease the tension in the room.

There's a different kind of glint in Gabe's eyes when their gazes meet though, and Jack is left hungry with the thought of how Gabe's blood had tasted and... Deeply unsettled that it was all he could seem to focus on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Chapters will be fairly short, just so it's easier for me to update more. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy! ♥


End file.
